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Haiti Recalls Greene With Gratitude

By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Published: April 27, 1991

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—
The lights still go out each day without warning here, and as ever, few tourists brave the poverty-filled streets. But 34 years after its start, the long, dark era of the Duvaliers and their sinister Tontons Macoute finally seems over, and for that, many here say, a belated measure of credit is due to the writing of Graham Greene.

While Mr. Greene, who died this month at age 86, specialized in chronicling the moral and political murkiness he encountered in the third world, taking particular interest in societies that ring the Caribbean, nowhere did he produce a more topical or damning work of fiction than his portrait of the dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier's Haiti of the early 1960's.

Amid the routine disclaimers that the principal characters in his Haitian novel, "The Comedians," were of his own creation, Mr. Greene wrote in the book's foreword: "Poor Haiti itself and the character of Dr. Duvalier's rule are not invented, the latter not even blackened for dramatic effect. Impossible to darken that night."

Before the publication of "The Comedians" in 1966, few outside Haiti knew much of the Tontons Macoute, the pistol-packing thugs who ruthlessly eliminated Dr. Duvalier's supposed opponents and terrorized the population from behind their dark glasses and rakish berets. The Author Recalled

Holding forth each morning over breakfast at the Hotel Oloffson, the 19th-century gingerbread concoction of turrets and terraces that is the scene of much of Mr. Greene's novel (under the name Hotel Trianon), Aubelin Jolicoeur, the longtime journalist and ascot-wearing dandy who was the model for the novel's gadfly and informer, Petit Pierre, still delights in recalling the author and his impact.

"He did a great deal for Haiti, even if many Haitians don't yet realize it," said the impeccably white-suited 66-year-old, who, much like his character in the novel, continues to write newspaper columns that range from tidbits of gossip to armchair philosophy, tenaciously maintaining his position as the informal keeper of the social history of Haiti and its leading eccentric.

"Graham Greene placed the word Tonton Macoute in the world's vocabulary," Mr. Jolicoeur said, fingering his trademark gold-tipped cane. "In a sense, his work assassinated Francois Duvalier, but at the same time, he created a great love for Haiti. Haiti will never again be confused with Tahiti."

In large measure because of the novel's depiction of the hotel, likened by Greene to a Charles Addams drawing, Richard Morse, the present-day manager of the Oloffson, has more guests than the three taken care of by the novel's central character, Mr. Brown. Still, tourism remains sick in Haiti, a victim of decades of violence and instability. 'Now Things Are Changing'

"It is fitting that Greene should have died now," said Mr. Morse, a 34-year-old American who took over the defunct hotel four years ago. "He was the one who exposed the horrors of Haiti. Now things are changing, his work has been done."

Mr. Greene's portrait of Haiti loosely covered the events of 1963, when foreign embassies filled with political refugees as Dr. Duvalier, who was soon to proclaim himself President for Life, engaged in a violent witch hunt. By one count, 196 Haitians, including many of Dr. Duvalier's closest collaborators, were killed by the Macoutes in the month of May alone.

In one celebrated incident, an army lieutenant was named chief suspect after shots were fired at the dictator's children as they left school one day. The officer, Francois Benoit, was named simply because he was known as a prodigious marksman. He escaped the country, but five members of his family were machine-gunned and their houses were set afire.

Mr. Greene's fictionalized renderings of Haiti's real-life terror, as well as his journalistic accounts of the repression in publications like The New Republic and Paris-Match, earned him the burning enmity of Dr. Duvalier. One Franc in Damages

"Once he got to Haiti and found Papa Doc, his hatred was considerable, but never greater than Papa Doc's hatred for him," said Norman Sherry, Mr. Greene's biographer, who was himself interrogated years later while visiting Haiti to research the author's life.

Dr. Duvalier tried to counter the publication of "The Comedians" with a tract published abroad titled "Graham Greene Unmasked," in which he denounced the author as "a cretin, a stool pigeon, sadistic, unbalanced, perverted, a perfect ignoramous, lying to his heart's content, the shame of proud and noble England, a spy, a drug addict, and a torturer."

When a movie was made of "The Comedians," a newly enraged Dr. Duvalier successfully sued Mr. Greene in France for defamation, but was awarded only one franc.

Acquaintances of Mr. Greene say that even as his attentions shifted to other places in the region, like Nicaragua, where he donated royalties to the Sandinistas, and Panama, where he struck up a friendship with the military leader Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera, he continued to follow events in Haiti with a keen interest long after the last of three visits in 1963.

Bernard Diederich, the author and veteran Time magazine correspondent who toured Haiti with Mr. Greene and later introduced him to General Torrijos, said that in a letter last November Mr. Greene had written enthusiastically of the candidacy of the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Roman Catholic liberation theologist who in December won Haiti's first democratic elections.

"I had no idea Father Aristide was putting himself up for the presidency," wrote Mr. Greene, himself an iconoclastic, left-leaning Catholic. "It would be wonderful if he got in."

Photo: Graham Greene with the producer-director Peter Glenville, and a voodoo priest during the filming of Mr. Greens novel "The Comedians" in 1967. The movie about haiti was shot in West Africa. (Associated Press)